Author Archives: Richard

What to Drink While Playing Diplomacy

Back in my college days, when I had joined the campus gaming club, I came to love the game Diplomacy. The chief problem with setting up a session was that you need at least five players (seven is normal, but there are rule variants that allow for less). And getting that many people together at once for what could take a full day of gaming…..

During the COVID shutdown, I found to my delight that there are a couple of websites where you can play the game online. Diplomacy seems perfect for it – time periods where the players discuss alliances and plan moves over a simple chat app, then once all moves have been submitted, a fairly simple program calculates and delivers the results. I signed up on one, and have always had a couple of games active.

To cut a long digression short, I began to wonder what beverages (alcoholic if possible) would it be appropriate to sip while representing each nation in Diplomacy…

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Opening Day 2025

Another season is about to (formally) begin – with all the hope and optimism that entails.

While everyone is looking at the teams in order of Most Likely to Win the World Series, there are still other things worth discussing.

Which team will be the worst? The Chicago White Sox can’t possibly lose as many games as they did last year (can they?). Giving them a run for their money as bottom dwellers are the Colorado Rockies and Miami Marlins. In the former case, team management can’t seem to assemble a team that can take advantage of Coors Field. In the latter, team management just doesn’t seem to care. At least the A’s have an owner that seems to be putting in some effort to get a fair team on the field.

And speaking of the A’s, what effect will playing in Sacramento have on the team? The same question can be asked of the “Tampa Bay” Rays, who will be calling another team’s spring training facility “home”. At least the Rays have an excuse – hurricane damage rendered The Trop unusable. John Fisher is just screwing around with the A’s.

On a nicer note, Dodgers’ pitcher Clayton Kershaw needs a mere 32 strikeouts to reach the magic 3,000 level for his career. It’s not a matter of if he’ll get them, but when. And which opposing player will be the victim. It’s highly unlikely he’ll reach the other major milestone of 300 wins – he’s 88 away, and 37 years old….. The closest pitcher to that Magic Number is Justin Verlander, at 262. And he’s 42 years old…. We can probably say goodbye to seeing any more 300 game winners. Verlander’s the only active player with more than 250…..

If I can stay with the Dodgers for one last thought, it’s pretty clear they are the best team in baseball this year. But that means very little when it comes to the playoffs. Is there a team that can stop them from repeating as World Champions? I’d bet that there is. But which one?

We’ll have to wait for all of that. But in the meantime, PLAY BALL!

Book Review: In Our Stars

In Our Stars: The Doomed Earth (Part 1)
Jack Campbell
Ace Books
Copyright 2024 by John G. Henry

The Earth Guard is tasked with protecting the space lanes in the inner Solar System. Intercepting ne’er-do-wells, clearing debris that might interfere with travel, and generally convincing people that it’s safe to travel between the planets. But the Guard is corrupt. Not in the way that everyone’s on the take (though that certainly happens at the highest levels); they are corrupt in that, at the command level, they are lazy. Anything that significantly disrupts the normal routine is A Problem. Anything that makes extra work is A Problem. And Problems are to be dealt with as quickly and easily as possible, before they become even bigger Problems.

So when the Vigilant, on a very routine patrol, comes across a HUGE hunk of debris from a spacecraft of unknown design, that’s A Problem. And when Lt. Kayl Owen, leading the team checking it out finds a survivor, that’s also A Problem. When the survivor says she’s Lt. Selene Genji of the Unified Fleet and claims to come from forty years in the future, well, that’s a Much Bigger Problem. And when she says she knows about the aliens who have just arrived in the Solar System, partly because she’s got some of their genetic material in her, well, that’s A Serious Problem that calls for a Solution with Extreme Prejudice. And if that troublemaker Kayl Owen, who believes her story and has take a liking to her, can be dealt with at the same time, well….

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On the Ides of March

(Don’t you hate when you rush to get a post written because the topic is time-sensitive, and then in your rush you actually forget to hit “Publish”?)

After finally defeating its only serious geopolitical rival, the Republic slowly turned into an oligarchy. The wealthy acquired the positions of power, and used their power to get even wealthier. The government became lazy and corrupt; occasional attempts at reform all failed due largely to institutional inertia. The “wealth gap” widened, but as long as the lower classes had their most basic needs met, rebellions and protests were minimal and easily dealt with.

Then a crisis happened (due in no small part to the Republic’s own policies) that struck at the very heart of the Republic. The oligarchs took over, and gave some of their own extraordinary powers to deal with the emergency.

After the emergency passed, one of those oligarchs schemed to take control of the government. The leaders of the Republic were too weak and ineffectual to resist – until that oligarch threatened their prerogatives and started talking about making himself king.

“As with all matters of ancient history, who are we to say who was wrong and who was right in all of that? All we can say for sure is that a man who was really, really full of himself, who believed that the law did not apply to him, and who thought of himself as a king got his ass murdered. Thankfully, history never repeats itself so none of this has any relevance to the present and none of us should give the ideas contained herein any additional thought.” – Craig Calcaterra

Epilogue: The power vacuum created by the assassination sparked a civil war; when that was over and the dust settled, the Republic had turned into an Empire anyway…

 

 

Book Review: Book and Dagger

Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II
Elyse Graham
Ecco Books
Copyright 2024 by the author

You could, if you want, blame Secretary of State Henry Stimson. In 1929, he’s alleged to have stuck his nose in the air and said “Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail”, and then shut down most of the United States’ foreign intelligence apparatus. So we were caught flat-footed when the Japanese attacked twelve years later.

Now it was up to William Donovan, the newly appointed head of the OSS, to put together his agency from scratch. The “Research and Development” side would be easy – just get a bunch of technical people to design and build all the secret devices of spycraft. But for the “Research and Analysis” department, which would collect and study the mountains of data needed by the US Military, you needed people with highly specialized training.

So that’s why a Yale English professor found himself at a “secure location”, learning how to silently kill someone with a knife, and how to deal with being interrogated by the enemy. Oh, by the way, you’d only need to hold up under capture and interrogation for 48 hours. Not because by that time they’d be done with you, or that you could expect to be rescued by then, but because that’s how long it should take for your contacts to forget they ever knew you and “vanish”….

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Pond in a Jar – 9 1/2

Finally got around to taking a photo (as promised in the last update, which is why this isn’t getting a whole number). It’s at the original size, by the way – no resizing, trimming, or color adjustments.

You can see the worm thing just above the shadow of the cable on the lower left. And the brownish spot a little left of center is one of the teeny snails. There’s new(ish) growth on the right, and plenty more at the top (most of which is just out of the image). You can also see a lot of leaves and stems turning brown and decaying, returning nutrients back to the muck.

One thing about the worm – I swear it pops up in slightly different places every now and then. I’d try and track it if I cared enough. By the way, I’ve had no luck identifying it. The only search results I get for “freshwater worms” (or similar terms) are parasites for fish – with more than enough icky photos…. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, let me know….

Photo after the jump:

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A “Town Ball” All Star Game – 3

And here’s where it all went kablooey.

I ran through the simulation, and things were going nicely. However, I completely forgot that if the home team is still leading after the visitors have had their six innings, there’s no reason at all to play the bottom of the inning (other than satisfying the gamblers), and so you won’t get to see some of the All Stars take their chances against the other league’s best pitcher.

I suppose that one could play the bottom half of the inning anyway, and then give the visitors one last crack at it. Send the home team’s best closer out to the mound, and then the visitors can send up whoever they want, in whatever order they want, to score as many runs as they can given the standard three outs. Should they actually take the lead, then the home team gets to do the same thing in the bottom of the “extra inning”. Continue as needed.

Or perhaps the format could be that the Visitors bat until they score a run (with commercial breaks and pitching changes after every five batters), then the Home Team comes to bat and hits until they take the lead (same thing about breaks every five batters), then the Visitors get to bat, etc. – but that sounds too much like a weekend softball league game.

At this point, I’ve put WAY more effort into the thing than was called for. If you want to play with the idea and run some simulated games, go right ahead.

And if you really want me to post the record of the game, just ask….

A “Town Ball” All Star Game – 2

Yeah, yeah, I get it – you want more than seven or eight All Star pitchers. But let’s be honest – most pitchers are just average, and no one (other than their specific fans or stat nerds) really wants to see a “set up man” in an All Star Game. I’d wager most casual fans can’t even name one. So the pitchers will be the top five or six starters, with a couple of closers of note.

As far as the players that will actually be out there on defense, we’ll leave that to fan voting. We’ll keep the rule that each team must have at least one representative. Maybe we’ll leave that up to the actual players on the team, or some sort of local poll. Or just the player with the highest WAR; it’s no big deal. The rest of the batting side of the roster can be filled out by the team’s manager, choosing from runners-up in the fan voting – with a decided bias to the big name stars. At least we won’t have to worry about having too many players at the same position – the starters voted in by the fans will be expected to be out there for all six innings.

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A “Town Ball” All Star Game – 1

This past summer I was among those musing about alternative formats to the standard All Star Game in Major League Baseball. Noting that the superstar players always tend to be taken out after an inning or three – which meant that when the game was on the line in the later innings, you had second or even third tier players coming up in the most dramatic moments. I posited a sort of “town ball” format to be used in the later innings. This would give an incentive to keeping players in longer, if you actually wanted to win the game.

Thinking on it some more, I wondered what it might be like if you just went with the town ball format for the entire game.

There would be some major changes to the format…..

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Book Review: Every Living Thing

Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
Jason Roberts
Random House
Copyright 2024 by the author

The Scientific Revolution kept rolling on. The Copernican Revolution changed how we look at the universe. Isaac Newton crystallized several lines of inquiry into modern physics. Now it was time to tackle the life sciences.

Two geniuses would set things in motion by taking on the huge task of organizing and classifying living things. In Sweden, Carl Linnaeus was set on becoming a doctor, but he found the field of botany more fascinating. In France, Georges-Louis Leclerc, the self-styled Comte de Buffon, used a lucky inheritance to indulge his passion for “natural history”. A brief work in statistics (“Buffon’s Needle”) got him noticed, and soon he was picked to be the “superintendent” of the Royal Garden* in Paris, where he was given the task of cataloging the massive collections.

Roberts treats these two contemporaries with a dual biography, showing how they approached the matter of the abundance and variety of life from two different directions.

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